LAKELAND, Fla.- The Ave Maria University cross country teams competed in their first full-length event on Friday morning, running in the FLRunners.com Invitational at Holloway Park in Lakeland. The women ran a 5k race and the men competed in an 8k, which are the lengths of both The Sun Conference and the NAIA championships. The women placed second in a seven-team field, while the men took third.

Mary Goetz paced the Gyrenes in Lakeland, placing third amongst the 62 competing runners. The junior, who extended her streak as the top AMU finisher in an event to 14, finished the 5k course in 20:30.42. Goetz was not alone in the top ten, as freshman Anna Morris logged a seventh-place finish. Morris was one of just eight runners to finish the Holloway Park course in under 21 minutes, recording a time of 20:51.57. The times of Goetz and Morris were faster than the top finisher from five of the other six teams in the event.

Ave Maria's team score was also contributed to by Peyton Brugger (23:02.12) and Bernadette Glasgow (23:20.60), who both finished in the top half of the field. The time of Grace McKillip (24:15.42) rounded out Ave Maria's team score, which topped Keiser by ten points and Pasco-Hernando State College by eleven points for the runner-up spot.

With five of the top six finishers (AMU's Goetz was the only non-SEU runner in top six), Southeastern cruised to the team title. Julia Rohm was the lone runner in the field to finish the course in under 20 minute, taking the individual title in a time of 19:33.31.

Joseph Perreault was the top finisher for the Gyrenes on the men's side, placing 12th in the 77 runner field. His time of 29:07.78 also finished seventh among runners on competing teams - five of the top 12 runners ran unattached. Adam Paga was also in the top 15 for Ave Maria, crossing the finish line at 29:25.55. Perreault and Paga were two of the 19 runners that completed the course in under 30 minutes.

Three more Ave Maria runners finished in the top half of the field, rounding out AMU's team score. DJ Mason logged a time of 30:24.59 to place 27th, while Jonathan Kohr followed with a 30:46.13. The top five Ave Maria runners were completed by Christopher Sanderson, who finished with a time of 30:59.60.

Southeastern narrowly topped Lake Sumter State College for the team title, with the Fire overcoming the Lake Hawks by five points. AMU followed in third with a 36 point cushion ahead of fourth-place Keiser. Unattached runner Antonio Gomez was the first individual finisher at 27:40.81.

Next Saturday, the Gyrenes will run at home for the first time in nearly three years, as AMU hosts the Ave Maria Invitational. This will also serve as a preview to The Sun Conference Championships, which will return to Ave Maria for the first time since 2017.